Prison terms for falsified soil tests
Ex-supervisors admit fraud at Hunters Point shipyard
Two former supervisors involved in the cleanup of radioactive contaminants at the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard have pleaded guilty to falsifying soil samples in the widening environmental scandal that has engulfed San Francisco’s largest redevelopment project.
The guilty pleas were made in 2017 as part of a criminal federal investigation that had been under seal until Wednesday, when one of the supervisors was sentenced to eight months in prison. The other supervisor was given the same sentence in January. Documents related to the cases were not immediately available online Thursday night.
Scrutiny of the cleanup at the shipyard has intensified in the past year, with more than 10,500
housing units, a hotel, schools and retail spaces anticipated for the 400-acre project. These are the first criminal cases to be made public.
“When our community’s health and safety is in jeopardy, we must vigilantly respond with all of our law enforcement tools,” Alex Tse, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said in a statement released Thursday. “This sentence reflects our commitment to ensure that bogus reports intended to deceive the protectors of our environment will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood near the toxic parcels, said that “after decades of outcry from the community” and reports of errors in the soil testing, she found the U.S. attorney’s actions “promising.”
Cohen will hold a hearing on the cleanup May 14 at the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee.
Justin Hubbard, 48, and Stephen Rolfe, 65, were both supervisors for Tetra Tech EC Inc., the main contractor working for the Navy on cleanup at the EPA Superfund site. In his May 18, 2017, plea agreement, Hubbard admitted substituting 5-gallon buckets of clean soil for potentially contaminated soil at the shipyard site. He then filled out fraudulent chain of custody forms, which were submitted to the Navy as evidence that the soil was free of harmful radiation.
Rolfe admitted similar crimes while describing a culture of widespread fraud and constant pressure to produce clean soil samples. On multiple occasions, he said in his March 15, 2017, plea agreement, Tetra Tech supervisors ordered him to “get the hell out” of contaminated areas and to “get clean dirt.”
On about 20 occasions, Rolfe told his employees to switch out potentially toxic soil with clean soil, so that the soil would pass lab tests and Tetra Tech would be able to say that certain portions of the shipyard were untainted.
“My motivation came from pressure applied by Tetra Tech supervisors,” Rolfe said in his plea, indicating the criminal investigation may be ongoing.
When reached at a phone number listed for Hubbard, a man who identified himself as Justin Hubbard said, “How ’bout this, go f— yourself,” and hung up.
He called back two minutes later from the same phone number and said, “You can tell that EPA c— to go f— herself.”
Rolfe could not be reached for comment.
Sam Singer, a San Francisco public relations and crisis communications consultant hired by Tetra Tech, said in a statement that the company “is fully supportive” of the actions taken against Hubbard and Rolfe by the Justice Department.
“Tetra Tech vehemently rejects this type of activity and will pursue all legal actions available to it to recover the harm that the actions of these former employees have caused to Tetra Tech, the Navy, and the local community,” Singer said. “We have zero tolerance for violations of established protocols and procedures on any project site.”
Radioactive waste has plagued the shipyard since the 1940s and 1950s, when the Navy used dry docks to decontaminate ships exposed to atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. The shipyard also housed the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, a cluster of buildings where scientists studied the effects of radiation on living tissue. Rats, donkeys and dogs were given lethal doses of poisonous isotopes.
The Navy has admitted that the $1 billion cleanup for the Superfund site was botched and the data skewed. Last month, an environmental watchdog group released a letter written by John Chesnutt, manager of the EPA’s local Superfund Division, which stated that as much as 97 percent of Tetra Tech’s cleanup data from two parcels on the site was suspect and should be retested.
Tetra Tech has previously responded that both conclusions are inaccurate. The Pasadena environmental engineering firm, which reported having revenue of $2.8 billion in 2017, said it will pay for retesting.
“We believe that any concerns can be directly addressed by actually retesting and analyzing the areas in question,” Tetra Tech CEO Dan Batrack said last month. “We want the Hunters Point community and the Navy to know that Tetra Tech stands by its work at Hunters Point.”
The sentences of Hubbard and Rolfe lend credence to previous allegations by whistleblowers who worked on the Hunters Point cleanup. In complaints to regulators, sworn statements last year, and media accounts first aired by NBC Bay Area, several former radiation technicians have said that Tetra Tech cut corners in the cleanup, falsified data and covered up evidence of radioactive contamination.
Several of the whistle-blowers’ sworn declarations accuse Hubbard of violating protocol, telling them to commit fraud and threatening them when they raised objections.
Anthony Smith, a radiation control technician, alleged that in 2009 Hubbard told him to dispose of a soil sample that had come back from the lab showing elevated levels of cesium 137, a radioactive isotope. According to Smith, Hubbard told him and other workers at the site to “get rid of it and not say a word.”
Bert Bowers, a radiation safety officer, said that when he raised questions about the unmonitored movement of potentially contaminated material on the site, Hubbard “just ‘blew up,’ verbally attacking me.”
Robert McLean, a senior radiological control technician, said, “The conduct and statements of Mr. Hubbard seemed to threaten our jobs and also seemed to threaten us physically.”
In an email sent to The Chronicle earlier Thursday, a Tetra Tech spokeswoman disputed Smith’s account about the sample containing cesium 137 and said his story wasn’t credible.
David Anton, an attorney representing Smith and six other Hunters Point whistle blowers, said the criminal sentences of the Tetra Tech supervisors are “just the beginning.”
“Justin Hubbard and Stephen Rolfe were people who took orders from higher up,” Anton said. “It means that the fraud there is real, despite what Tetra Tech said, and it’s gotta be cleaned up right, otherwise it’s a hazard for everybody else.”